


Kara's Story

by Evilpixie



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alien Culture, Culture Shock, Gen, Krypton, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 09:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6323695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how Kara Zor-El came to Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kara's Story

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr as one of my very rare tumblr flash fics but have since decided it is just long enough (and stand-alone enough) to populate my page here. I hope you enjoy.

“Get in!”

 

“Dad I…”

 

“You have to get in, Kara!”

 

“But Dad…”

 

“She’ll never make it, Zor! Zod’s blockade is shooting down anything larger than…”

 

“I know that, Allura. We have to try.”

 

“You don’t even know where you’re sending her!”

 

“If Jor is willing to send his son to these coordinates we know…”

 

“No, Zor! We don’t know! It’s Jor-El we’re talking about. Your brother! That could be a black hole he believes will take his son to a new universe or a sun he believes will make Kal indestructible.”

 

“Dad?”

 

“Get in the ship, Kara.”

 

“And Kal-El was small enough to slip under Zod’s sensors! She is not! Even with the blockers the likelihood is…”

 

“Can’t you feel that Allura? Can’t you see what’s happening? Krypton is collapsing in on itself! Soon we will all be dead. She stands a greater chance against Zod’s ships and _whatever_ world Jor-EL has picked out than if she stays here.”

 

“Dad I…”

 

“Get in the ship, Kara.”

 

“I…” she shook as another earthquake rocked the building. “Where am I going? Are you coming? W-what is…?”

 

“We’ll follow you,” her father said. “In the star-pod.”

 

“But… the star-pod is big enough for all three of us. Why can’t I go with you? Why do I have to…?”

 

When her mother spoke again it was deadly soft. “She’s our daughter, Zor.”

 

“And this is the best chance we have of keeping her alive. Look at me, Kara. This ship is small and fast. It has sensor blockers on it. It will put you to sleep once you’re in space but it needs to focus all power on getting you up through the blockade first.”

 

“It doesn’t have controls…”

 

“It can’t. That would make it too large. Zod’s ships would detect it for sure. It has my AI to guide it.”

 

“But the star-pod has controls. And it’s big. If you’re going on that then…”

 

For a moment her father looked torn. “I… Kara you know we lo—”

 

“Zor! The mountains! They’re... by Rao. They’re falling.”

 

“Get in, Kara!”

 

He shoved her into the tiny pod, still wearing the cape and shield from her graduation, and slammed it shut behind her. She could barely move in the restricted space. Didn’t have enough room to turn her head.

 

“Dad? Dad!”

 

Kara stared out the small plated window at her parents.

 

She saw her mother – Allura – run towards her as if to let her out. Her father caught her, said something, and then they both stood and watched as her ship readied for launch. They weren’t running to the star-pod. Why weren’t they running to th—her ship shot skywards with a lurch that pulled her heart down to her feet.

 

She saw Kryptopolis.

 

She saw the people celebrating the guild graduation with large lavish parties held on the underside of their decks, using antigravity generators so they wouldn’t have to look up at General Zod’s blockade or the weather, which had been a constant storm since the weather control towers went offlink three days ago; destroyed by the war, by earthquakes, and one by the intense levels of radiation coming up from a fissure in the planet’s surface.

 

She saw the council champers lit for the sentencing of the captured General and the people gathered outside in morbid curiosity to watch as the Phantom Zone activated.

 

She saw the new lead containment around the city’s power source sitting like a bubble in the middle of the interlocking streets.

 

Then she saw the horizon.

 

It was coming closer.

 

The planet’s surface falling away as if being sucked down a waste tube in a spray of disturbed magma and radioactive rock.

 

She watched, transfixed, as the wave of destruction hit the outskirts of the sprawling city. She watched as millions of people began to tumble into the abyss. She watched as buildings fell, streets burned, and on the other side of the city people laughed and breathed revelry gas and stood on their upside down party decks… blind to the world ending around them.

 

Only a few people noticed. Pointing, screaming, and jumping into speeders, transport ships, star-pods…

 

She looked down. Desperately trying to pick out their compound from the tangle of city streets below her. She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see their star-pod. She couldn’t…

 

Her ship was swallowed by the clouds.

 

A moment of turbulence and then she was above them and facing Zod’s armada. The warships were still following orders despite the capture of their leader. She saw them blow a few speeders out of the sky with lazy ease. She saw one broadcast a brief warning before eviscerating a transport vessel. She saw another, hovering dangerously near her, turn to point its guns.

 

She screamed as the gun fired. The brightness of the blast flashing just beside her vessel. On the second strike it hit the side sending her into a corkscrew spin.

 

She had no controls. She had no read out. She had no idea what kind of damage had been done. But she was still going upward. Fast.

 

She felt the shudder as the ship was ripped through the atmosphere, beyond the reach or care of Zod’s armada, and then she was being fired through space. She couldn’t see much through her window. Just stars and rock spinning into a dizzying swirl. She tried to claw herself into an angle where she could look back. It was hard but she finally found a place where she could gaze back at the planet rolling away behind her… and from there she watched as Krypton swallowed itself.

 

The shockwave struck her damaged vessel, knocked it out of its spin, but ripped away something that looked terrifyingly like one of the boosters. The mess of metal and machinery flew off into space and her ship shuddered… slowing.

 

She stared after it. Everything inside her awash with horror and confusion.

 

She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to go back home.

 

Something beeped and the air turned bitter. Some small part of her recognised the taste of hibernation gas. Her mother used to use it to send her to sleep on the journey between Argo City, Kandor, and Kryptopolis when she was a girl.

 

Choking back a sob she latched onto that memory and closed her eyes.

 

When she opened them the world was dark. But, despite that, somehow she could see it. She could see everything. She could see the liquid – more liquid than she had ever seen before – surrounding her ship. She could see the strange grey rock canyon the liquid flowed through. And she could see the demon floating above her.

 

Black pronged ears, eerily Kryptonian fingers, and a tail of air leading from its mouth.

 

She closed her eyes and this time when she opened them the water was gone, the lights were on, and her ship was being opened.

 

Two men stood above her, one was the demon. But not a demon. A man dressed like a demon. The other wore the warrior ceremonials for House of El… though she had never seen him before. They were speaking to each other in a strange language. A fast paced chatter completely alienated from any language she had ever heard before.

 

One more blink and she was lying on a table.

 

Small strangely shaped machines made odd chirping noises, animals like she had never seen clustered on the far ceiling, and somewhere nearby the two men were still talking. She turned her head, trying to find them, and instantly the one in the House of El ceremonials knelt beside her. Their gazes met.

 

He looked familiar. The shape of his nose, mouth, and cheeks all things she had seen before but on different faces.

 

When he spoke again it was in Kryptonian.

 

“Hello,” he said. His accent was thick and strange. Almost too strong to understand. “My name is Kal-El.”

 

A beat.

 

“Who are you?”

 

She stared. “Kal-El is a baby...” She’d held him once for a few moments before uncomfortably handing him back to his mother. A newborn. The son of Lara and Jor-El. Her cousin.

 

The baby that had been sent into space. The baby she was following.

 

The man studied her. Waited.

 

“I… my name is Kara Zor-El. I…” she fingered the hem of her cape and looked around. “I graduated today… and… and then… then dad came and I thought we were going to go and celebrate but he said… he said…” she started to cry. Ugly and involuntary.

 

The man – Kal-El – grabbed her with a frightening urgency and turned her face towards him as a gush of air flooded out of her with impossible force followed by a strange flash of red.

 

He took it. Flinched in pain when the red hit him but took it. Holding her as she cried.

 

After a time the demon man spoke. A soft inquiry.

 

Kal-El responded with in the alien language. She heard her name. She heard her father’s name. She heard Jor-El’s name. She also heard the word Krypton, said with a strange inflection on the _oh_ sound. That more than anything else stuck in her brain. How could they not know how to pronounce Krypton? How could…?

 

And that was when she truly knew her home was gone.


End file.
